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Uppity Wisconsin - Progressive Webmasters

February 23, 2007

Chad Vader Creators Take Lightsaber to Tom Still's Assertions About Cutting Funding For Local Cable Access

Tom Still published a piece Tuesday in WisOpinion arguing against continuing to fund local access TV channels, and cited the success of the creators of Chad
Vader, Madison's Aaron Yonda and Matt Sloan of Blame Society Productions, as justification for his position against local cable franchises, which
just happens to exactly mirror at&t's legislative efforts. Yonda and Sloan have
enjoyed so much local (Isthmus, Cap Times) and national press (Good Morning America, VH1) that they hardly need any little additional hype
from WaxingAmerica.

Still, who is the head of the Wisconsin Technology Council, wrote:

The Legislature is considering a proposal to allow AT&T, the
world’s largest telecommunications company, to enter the subscription
television market, improve its Internet services and provide
computer-linked telephone service. That would essentially set up
competition between AT&T and cable companies, the largest of which
in Wisconsin are Time Warner Cable and Charter.

...But opening up the market won’t be that simple. Wisconsin
municipalities, which have collected fees from cable companies for
years, want to make sure they secure a similar arrangement with
AT&T. Those same municipalities want AT&T to pony up money to
support local public, education and government television channels –
collectively known as “local access” channels.

That brings us back to Chad Vader and YouTube, which may be the
public access channel of the 21st century. At a time when a couple of
filmmakers in Madison can create a series that gets 7 million hits on
the Internet, is it really necessary to subsidize public access
television channels?

...Granted, local access television can be a vital part of community
democracy, but it’s no longer the only game in town. The Internet, with
blogs, podcasts, YouTube and more, is changing that landscape a lot
faster than local regulators can regulate.

As members of the Legislature consider state “video franchising,”
they should keep the big picture in mind. The Internet is changing the
telecom world. Governments need to create regulatory frameworks that
anticipate change; that expect new technologies. They should not be
clinging to regulatory frameworks that lock them into a specific
technology, because such an approach will ultimately impede progress.

“Chad Vader” may be Darth’s incompetent brother, but he’s also a symbol of a new video world.

As far as I knew, those "Chad Vader guys" started on local access, and still have a show. So I asked them what they thought of Still's argument.

Sloan wrote me:

To take the success of two internet entrepreneurs and use that to
make a case for gutting funding for public access stations is pretty
shortsighted and frankly, dumb. (emphasis Waxing America) Public access stations strengthen
communities and provide amateurs with the resources and the basic
skills to learn film and television production, neither of which has
anything to do with the Internet. You can't be a successful filmmaker
without networking and interacting with real live people and that is
something that sitting in front of a web cam will never provide. The
Internet revolution is amazing and it will change the world, but public
access stations are still crucial in giving the community the resources
to make the most of that revolution.

Yonda added:

I think public access stations are more important than ever before--because of the internet.

Public access is what made Chad Vader possible. I never would have started making videos if I hadn't had a public access station in Eau Claire, WI where I could get equipment, receive instruction on how to use it, and make connections and collaborate with other like-minded individuals. In fact if I hadn't been able to make my public access show I probably never would've teamed up with Matt in 2001 because he wouldn't have seen the show and met with me about collaborating. I did all my videos, including early internet videos, through public access in Eau Claire (1993-1996) and in Madison (1996-2004). In 2004, I started to be able to afford most of my own equipment because of money I'd saved up.

I'd say that Youtube, rather than being a replacement to Public Access, is made possible by Public Access stations around the country that offer a place for struggling video-makers to get a start and make videos in the first place, especially now that the internet has made video-making even more popular. ... I know for sure if funding had been pulled from our public access station at any point in my video making career Chad Vader would never have existed. (emphasis WaxingAmerica)

So, in fact, Still's "symbol of the new video world" wouldn't ever have existed without local cable access. Chad Vader is a good argument for the exact opposite of at&t's position that "the Internet makes local access unnecessary." (Facts matter, Tom; gotta check 'em.)

Still also wrote:

...In Gainesville, Fla., late last year, both the Gainesville
City Commission and the Alachua County Commissioners declined to create
a local access channel because they didn’t think it was needed. They
cited the growth of the Internet and its rapidly expanding array of
video choices.

In fact, the City of Gainesville has had an active government access channel for many years, and an active educational access channel as well. The City and County did decide last year against creating a local public access channel, but that would have been Gainesville's third access channel. They are now considering creating a third access channel for the County to program. That's hardly "declined to create
a local access channel because they didn’t think it was needed." (Context matters too, Tom. Gotta provide it, otherwise you're distorting the facts.)

These are the kind of factually-light arguments and distortions that are behind at&t's efforts to establish "less burdensome" control of video services using
public rights-of-way. Local access channels provide real value to their
communities, and, in fact, "can be a vital part of community
democracy," whether it's providing coverage of City Council and school board meetings, or the high school basketball games, or locally-grown comedy. And, as the real story of Chad Vader proves, they are also nice little economic and professional development organizations. Let's not brush them aside just to make things a little cheaper and easier for at&t, which is, as Tom Still accurately states, "the
world’s largest telecommunications company."

More to come as at&t prepares a bill for its friends in the legislature to introduce and ram through.

- Barry Orton

Comments

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As the Manager of Madison City Channel, the City's local government television station, I was disappointed as well by Tom's comments. How likely is it going to be that you will see an entire Madison Common Council meeting on YouTube anytime soon? Not very.
And it is of course true that Madison City Channel does stream (live and archived) all of the programming we produce (meeting coverage, candidate forums, public affairs programs, coverage of other special meetings, presentations and events) on our website at www.mcc12.tv, but we wouldn't be able to do any of this without the resources we have been entrusted with through the small fee that Madison Charter subscribers pay each month - a fee that was negotiated and voted on by local elected officials as being appropriate for Madison. It wasn't some arbitrary "one size fits all" fee determined on a statewide level.
Local franchising isn't broken. It doesn't need to be fixed. If AT&T is serious about providing competition to Charter in Madison they could come to an agreement with us VERY quickly. The City is not holding up progress. Let's go!

Serving as a board member of Eau Claire's public access channels, Community TV (11 & 12), I see the current argument by the telephone companies as disingenuous. To claim they don't have the ability to offer service is bogus on it's face. Any company is welcome to come into a community and offer its service. That process includes dealing with the local governments on such issues as public access channels. What this proposed legislation does is remove local input and by cutting funding, opens up more channels for commercial (read $$$$) utilization. To claim the internet supercedes the need for public access ignores such a broad range of constituents and facts as to be laughable. Unfortunately, it makes a great sound bite.

On the other hand, in converstaions with small telecommunications company executives I have learned that local governments have created obstacles in the process of granting new service access to some areas. An example of this would be where a local government won't convene the appropriate committee, or demands unreasonable services or concessions of the company.

My point in bringing this up is that it's important to understand both sides of the issue so that a solution addresses the concerns of all the parties involved.

You know I hear all sorts of horror stories about cities making unreasonable demands in exchange for cable TV franchises. What I haven't heard or seen yet are specific, verifiable instances where that has happened.

As a member of the cable commission in little Jefferson, WI, pop. 7,500, I too am disappointed by Still's comments. I can assure you that AT&T isn't helping us here so far. For years, only half of our town can get AT&T DSL. They cross the Rock River with fiber, so DSL copper technology doesn't reach half the city. I've never heard an explanation as to why they don't want to serve the other half of the city. Charter Cable does deliver high-speed throughout.

I welcome television competition. I'd like to think every company would be glad to carry our community's public access channels. After all, people watch them. They are true local content, unlike the disorganized international glut on YouTube. There are no commercial television stations that originate from Jefferson County. As I've darkly described it many times, you need to kill someone to get on TV around here. It's a rare day when a Madison or Milwaukee newspaper or TV station sends a reporter to Jefferson.

I get the feeling they won't want to carry our channels, though, unless required by law. Hundreds of channels plus pay-per-view, but no room for our city channel and our school channel?

Of course, what AT&T and all the other providers really want to avoid is the franchise fee. Charter pays 5% tax on gross TV (non-Internet) revenue to the City government, the full amount the FCC allows them to tax. Not all cities use this revenue to support their public access channels. The situation varies widely. In Jefferson County, I think Watertown gets about 70%, Fort gets 0%, Whitewater gets 100%. Our cable commission has spent three years pleading with the Council. Now we get approximately 10% for the channels we launched two years ago.

I don't think they want a level playing field - they just want to avoid this existing tax. Many cities are addicted to this easy revenue. In Jefferson, with perhaps 2,500 households, it's more than $70,000 a year. Charter would be happy to stop paying it, too. After all, satellite-based providers don't pay it. But this stream of tax revenue is how most public access channels are funded.

A few years ago, many providers were loaning communities money to capitalize their new channels. Last year, even Charter, with a monopoly in Fort Atkinson, refused to offer any loan (paid back by subscribers over time) to help them start a second channel.